Flowcharts, user flows, and task flows, oh my.
If you are newer to the field of UX design, interaction design, or Information Architecture (IA), you may be wondering the same thing I was: what is the difference between a task flow, user flow, wire flow, and flowcharts?
After just a little bit of research or asking around your group of designer friends, you’ll start to realize that many people have slightly different perspectives. This article is an effort to offer a perspective on each.
Before getting into what these flows are used for, let’s go back to basics. The definition of flow from the Oxford dictionary states: “To proceed or be produced smoothly, continuously, and effortlessly.” Designers must consider how the user will navigate comfortably through their product, service, or experience.
All of the flows mentioned above are generally utilized during the interaction design phase of a designer’s UX design process. During this phase, UX designers typically construct the hierarchy, organization, structure, and relationships across the content and features of the specific service or product’s design. This is done to help users easily and harmoniously navigate their way through the product in order to accomplish their goals and leave happy enough to return again.
As you will see, there are quite a few different diagrams and artifacts that can be created and utilized during the interaction design phase, but at the end of the day, an important principle to remember comes quoted from a great article titled Tools for Mobile UX Design: Task Flows. In this article the author, Steven Hoober states, “But the task-flow diagram has a more important role, in making sure that you and the whole team are keeping the user and the context of each feature well in mind.”
Flowcharts
A flowchart is a diagram that “flows out” the sequence of movements and/or actions the user takes within a complex system. The flowchart begins with the consumer’s entry point on the product, like an onboarding screen, and ends with the final action or outcome, like purchasing a product. This is a great method for evaluating the user experience by visually representing the many avenues a user can take when using the product or service. Multiple elements can be shown here such as key screens, user’s actions, and user’s decisions.
User Flows
Similar to a flow chart, the point of user flows and task flows is to create experiences that allow users to accomplish a task as quickly and easily as possible. A user flow is a path the user follows through a product that includes their decision points. The difference here is that a user flow can start off pretty simply to determine key user journeys but can easily evolve into more complex flows by adding all of the many decisions a user can make. It is very useful for adding edge cases and decisions a user takes that drastically change the course of the flow.
Task Flows
A task flow is different from a user flow in that is is more focused on a specific task, whereas a user flow is more focused on a specific user. A task flow focuses on accomplishing a very specific task at a high level such as signing up for a service or adding an item to the user’s cart. Task flows don’t usually branch out and are meant to be more linear and simple. Task flows can especially helpful after looking through data analytics and seeing users are experiencing issues completing specific tasks.
So, as you can see while these flows share the common goal of designing the best possible user experience, their focus differs. As UX designers, it is our task (no pun intended) to decide which diagrams will serve not only our process but our users the best. Thankfully, with many tools at our disposal, we are able to do the leg work necessary to set ourselves up for creating products that truly meet the user’s needs.
As Steven Hoober said, “It is important to understand your users — they’re not like you. Remember to respect the UX research and the user input to the design process, being careful not to override the findings with good ideas — “I bet what they meant was…” — or gut feelings or fall back on legacy behaviors.”
